[Sci-tech-public] STS Colloquium: Monday, September 12, 4:00 p.m.

[Debbie Meinbresse]

The first STS Colloquium in the 2005-2006 series will be held on Monday, 
September 12th:


THE WORK OF ECONOMICS:
HOW A DISCIPLINE MAKES ITS WORLD


What is the work of economics? How does it operate to establish facts and 
make them stable?  Taking the case of a recent "natural experiment" that 
used the social world as a laboratory and produced remarkable results, 
enthusiastically received by economists and development agencies, Mitchell 
examines the work of organizing the socio-technical world required to 
produce economic knowledge. He explores the curious kind of facts that were 
produced, the connections among those involved in this work, in particular 
the organized work of the global neoliberal movement, and the role of the 
new facts in making possible further efforts at economic experimentation.

Our speaker will be Timothy Mitchell, a political and social theorist who 
studies the political economy of the Middle East, the political role of 
economics and other forms of expert knowledge, and the place of colonialism 
in the making of modernity. His most recent book is Rule of Experts (2002). 
Educated at Cambridge University and Princeton University, he is now 
Professor of Politics at New York University. From 1996 to 2003 he served 
as Director of NYU's Center for Near Eastern Studies. He is currently the 
director of a four-year project on "The Authority of Knowledge in a Global 
Age" at the International Center for Advanced Studies at NYU.

Please join us Monday afternoon for Professor Mitchell's talk at 4:00 p.m. 
in E51-095.

A reception will immediately follow the colloquium and discussion period.

See you there!


Debbie Meinbresse
STS Program, MIT
617-253-4062 
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